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I tried setting the datadir=/Volumes/BLOCKCHAIN (which is the path to my external drive). Then I ran bitcoind and this is the end of the output, right before it kicks my drive out and gives me a Bus error: 10.

...
2019-10-22T16:30:26Z init message: Loading block index...    
2019-10-22T16:30:26Z Opening LevelDB in /Volumes/BLOCKCHAIN/blocks/index
2019-10-22T16:30:26Z Opened LevelDB successfully
2019-10-22T16:30:26Z Using obfuscation key for /Volumes/BLOCKCHAIN/blocks/index: 0000000000000000
Bus error: 10

Is there another way I can achieve this?

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2 Answers 2

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If you're using USB 2.0, your problem is going to be the read/write speeds.

Minimum requirements state that you need at least a read/write speed of 100 MB/s.

Typical high-speed USB 2.0 connected drives only do about 40-50 MB/s.

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  • I believe I have a faulty SATA or SATA case because it's USB 3.0 and should have read/write speeds faster than 100 MB/s. But beyond the external drive is it okay if I do this method?
    – Matthew Cruz
    Commented Oct 22, 2019 at 18:23
  • Yeah of course. It's likely something is off with your external setup, as you say. Is the drive powered by USB as well or does it have its own power supply? Just another thought. There's also usually a board in between SATA interfaces and the USB that might be faulty or throttling speeds somehow. Do a drive speed test and see if the numbers do indeed exceed 100 MB/s.
    – tgunnoe
    Commented Oct 22, 2019 at 18:50
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You definitely should use an SSD for storing the Bitcoin blockchain. A spinning hard disk gets too much stress over time and becomes quite warm, because there is a constant reading and writing going on. If you don't have any other disk, then don't store other data on it, I wouldn't trust that disk over time.

Also make sure that you have write permissions on the disk.

To see if the error comes from a faulty connector or adapter, you can run an I/O test. Depending on the operating system you're using, there's many good ones out there. For Linux, I love Bonnie++.

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